■69^'? 



\9 



SOME *^F THE PROBLEMS OF EMPIRE. 



ORATION 



DELIVKRKI) AT 



The C 



HE UOMMENCEMENT 



COLLEGE OF CALIFORNfA 



Wednesday, Juiie 3d, 1868. 



R-EV- JOSEI^H A. BENTON, 



Of San ITrancisGO. 






SAN FRANCISCO : 
Excelsior Press, Bacon and Company, Printers., 

No. 536 Clay Street, just below Montgomery. 
1868. 




SOME OF THE PROBLEMS OF EMPIRE. 



ORATION 



DELIVERED AT 



The C 



OM MEN CEMENT 



COLLEGE OF CALIFORNIA, 



AVe dues day, J^lll© 3d, 1868. 



REV. JOSEPH A. BENTON, 

or San Francisco. 



SAN FRANCISCO : 
Excelsior Press, Bacon and Company, Printers, 

No. 536 Clay Street, just below Montgomery. 
1868. 






Lf J3V7 YORir PDBI,. JttEr?^ 
IN EXCHANGE, 



SOME OF THE PEOBLEMS OF EMPIRE. 



Mr. President, Officers and Truistees ; 

Ladies and Gentlemen : 

The world was made for man, and not man for the world. ^The 
world studied in the light of this maxim leads to true science ; in the 
light of any different maxim, to sciolism. The world was so made 
for man that it was intended to be in subjection to him. All right- 
minded persons respect that venerable authority which assigns to 
man dominion over air, earth and sea. Legitimately and theoreti- 
cally, man is lord of the world. It is his asserted privilege and 
right. But, as yet, this is only a predicament of the possible. The 
prerogative has been very imperfectly maintained. Through one 
lapse, dispersion, confusion, and alienation, and another, the fail- 
ure to maintain the prerogative has been very marked. Beginning 
frequently with the rudest forms, the attempt to maintain the pre- 
rogative has been the grand struggle of the ages. 

The desire for dominion naturally concerns itself first with the 
more tangible forces of nature which offer themselves to be har- 
nessed and guided ; and then with the more tameable parts of the 
animal kingdom. But these successes are too few and the processes 
too rude to give satisfaction to the heart ; and so, from the earliest 
times, the ambition to rule has, for its gratification, turned away 
too much from earth, air and sea, from brute and clime, to the asser- 
tion of dominion over man himself — as an inferior, or as a captive, 
or as one unskilled in the use of arms. In this direction, in fact, 
have been turned many of the great heads and hearts, the strong 
arms and resolute wills of the race in all the centuries of time. 



Empires have been built on man overthrown, rather than on chained 
seas and continents subdued, and forests hewn down, and mountains 
leveled, and rivers spanned, and nature wooed into the bondage of 
sweet and tireless servitude. 

The old dream of empire seems to have been a magnificent 
rather than a grand one. It was continental, not universal. Its 
horizon was scarcely wider than that set by the common thirst for 
power, and the probable sweep of armies ; though new fields of em- 
pire shaped themselves from chaos as the centuries rolled. And 
Avhen, at length, imagination had plumed her wings for adventurous 
flight, the habitable world had outgrown human conceit, and the 
possibilities of men had become immeasurable. 

Profane history knows nothing of any very early empire. There 
was none. There could be none. Empire is impossible where there 
is not some sort of culture to bejcome its nucleus, and then its center. 
Barbarism, by its very terms, excludes organization, culture and 
art. Men must begin, at least, to think, to study, to project, to 
combine and organize, before they can render war and conquest 
even dignified, and before any permanence can be given to their 
results. As soon as it is known how conquests can be held, as well 
as made, the act of governing men has been found ; at least, in its 
rudiments. 

The desire to rule men, and the thought that force must needs 
carry over the desire into effect, because nothing else could, long 
held sway in the world. For generations the art of war was almost 
the one study of the race, outside of the number that must be, in 
every age, hewers of wood and drawers of water, mere plodders of 
the earth. Yet, slowly, the desire to have dominion has widened 
out, and risen up, and refined itself, and the knowledge of what 
dominion might become has increased, and the dream of empire has 
grown heavenwide. The great empires of the world, those that have 
been most directly in the line of authentic human history, have 
shown a kind of progress toward some true ideal, and have illus- 
trated also the fatality of the wrong idea. They have, in their own 
Avays, been fulfilling that wise and good providential purpose which 
seems to us to have been, and to be, to bring the human race finally 
into the fullness of that dominion which was made at the first its dis- 
tinguishing and grand prerogative. It is one of the rights of man- 
kind to have all things put under itself in air, and earth, and sea. 



And we are to regard all the assertions of power, all the struggles 
for preeminence, even in their frequent failure, but as so many fore- 
shadows and prophecies of that glorious dominion which is to be, 
and is becoming, as the generations go marching along. 

Glancing at the ancient world, we see its five more noted empires, 
and turning to the modern world we behold other five, as well as 
regions and peoples that have, at this stage of remark, no classifica- 
tion. We assume that every distinguished, mighty empire has had 
its own meaning, and has illustrated some dominant truth or law ; 
not to the exclusion of every other, but in the forefront of all others. 
The empire of the Assyrians, Babylonians and Chaldeans, for in- 
stance, represented the idea of absolutism — both in war and peace 
— the monarch being regarded as the owner of his empire, all its 
land, all its property, all its men, and all their powers, and all their 
products. The empire of the Modes and Persians represents the 
idea of destination, the immutable frame of things-— legalitie%p,nd 
institutions stereotyped, the unalterable sacredness of what has been. 
The Grecian empire represents the idea of culture, beauty and sat- 
isfaction, to be obtained through game, exploit, development, art, 
and generous training, and even war as an art. The Roman em- 
pire represents the idea of power asserting itself magnificently, in 
structures of conquest, laws, institutions, cities, aqueducts, roads, 
and other monuments. The Chinese empire represents conservat- 
ism ; the notion that perfection has been reached ; that the best is 
possessed ; that the highest possible or practicable has been gained, 
and that men have nothing to concern themselves with but the tra- 
ditions of the past and the maxims of the sages. So much, in few 
words, do the five governmental empires of the ancient world signify 
to us. 

The five modern governmental empires on the same fields of action, 
in the main, are the Turkish, the British, the French, the Russian, 
and the German ; and if we recognize the Chinese as modern, there 
will be six. The Turkish empire represents the idea of fanaticism, 
growing out of a fatalistic philosophy, and the sword regarded as 
the weapon of church and -state, and hewing the way for men into 
a future heaven of sensual delights. The British empire represents 
possession, wealth, rank, and asserted superiority, with a patroniz- 
ing regard for the great masses of the people. The French empire 
represents brilhant achievement, progress, aspiration, steadiness in 



6 

the pursuit of fame, along with great unsteadiness of method. The 
Russian empire represents the idea of dominion, vastness, numbers, 
grandeur undeveloped, and novelty of position, and something of 
the rawness of a people unused to their place. The German em- 
pire represents historic pride, the power of great memories, and the 
affinities of race, language and literature. And the modern empire 
of China represents the force of ideas, institutions and characters, 
in holding their way, like a gulf-stream, through oceans of time, 
in conquering -their conquerors, and living on through changes of 
dynasties and invasions of philosophies. If we introduce this New 
World of ours into the view, we have the empire of liberty for the 
northern part of America ; and the Brazilian empire of hope 
and promise, and growth, law and light, for the southern part of 
America. 

In this brief glance we have, of course, passed over the smaller 
parts of the civilized world, and all those parts of the globe which 
are half civilized or barbarous. 

One grand problem just now before mankind is a confederation of 
the great nations, and a reconstruction of governmental empires. 
The smaller a nation is the more it costs in proportion to wealth and 
population to maintain its government. Hence, for economical and 
for other reasons, there should be no small nations. Other things 
the same, the governments of great countries are the best and 
cheapest. And it should be the aim of mankind to consolidate and 
diminish governments, not to increase them ; and to build out great 
empires of constitutional freedom, law and power, which shall res- 
pect themselves, and shall command the respect of all others in 
existence. 

Were I to indicate my views of the proper division and adjust- 
ment of mankind into economical and grand empires, I should pre- 
mise a few things. There is no longer any need of defining national 
boundaries by the physical features of the globe ; such as seas, 
rivers, and mountains. Blood, language and religion are commonly 
the ties that must bind empires together, in addition to economical 
reasons, and those of local necessity and sympathetic history. On 
the continent of Europe, then, I would consolidate all the peoples 
whose language is of Latin origin into one empire ; France, Belgium, 
Spain, Portugal, and Italy, and parts of Austria and Switzerland. 
Austria should cease to be, and its parts go, according to language 



and blood, into Italy, Germany, Greece and Russia. The German 
empire should have all the Teutonic peoples for its own, taking in 
portions of Austria, Switzerland and Holland, and all of Norway, 
Sweden and Denmark. Russia is so huge in proportions as to need 
no enlargements, but should take to itself all such Scandinavian and 
Sclavic peoples as are not necessary to the symmetry and local 
requirements of any other nation. Turkey should be thrust out of 
Europe, and sent to the regions east of Asia Minor, where an 
Arabic empire might live and flourish. A new Grecian empire 
should then replace Turkey in Europe and Asia Minor, in Crete 
and in Cyprus. The British empire, insular and Asiatic, might, for 
the present, continue as it is. In the course of another century 
a new empire of India may arise : when Brahm and Budh shall 
have made their bed together in nubibus, and floated away into 
oblivion. An empire yet to be should hold the bulk of Africa ; 
Australasia should be erected into a power by itself ; all South 
America be given to Brazil, and all North America to the Great 
Republic. The un enumerated fractions of the world would remain 
to be adjusted by elective aflinities and by economical considerations, 
as time advanced. If it should be objected that some of these 
empires might be grand despotisms, it can be said that grand des- 
potisms are not half so bad as small despotisms, not half so expens- 
ive, and not likely to last half so long. 

It is obvious that one of the earliest measures of necessity before, 
and in, such a readjustment is, that of a common agreement amongst 
all the nations upon a unit of value, a good money standard, and a 
world coinage, a general system of weights and measures for all 
sorts of commodities and business, for estimating the tonnage of 
ships, and for deciding upon every other matter important in the 
intercourse of men in trade, travel, science and philosophy. 

Another, and perhaps, a more difficult problem to be solved, in 
this order of things, is that of an international or universal lan- 
guage, and a general grammar. The race must regain what it 
lost — certainly as long ago as when the tower in the plains of Shinar 
was building. It must, practically, become again, for its grand 
affairs, " of one speech and one language." The time must come 
speedily when a cultured man can go around the world, with the 
same language, the same money, the same dress, the same methods 
of living, the same modes of travel, to which he has accustomed 



himself at home, as a cosmopoHtan in prospect, and a lord of the 
world. 

It is not desirable, if it were possible, to abolish the indigenous 
speech, the vernacular tongue, of any people. The traditions, 
habits, language, and style of peoples are necessary to their nation- 
al life, hterature, and best peculiarities ; and these ought not to be 
rudely, or otherwise, crushed out, or driven away. But, the com- 
mon language of the world could be naturalized, by being made the 
written language of Indians, Islanders, and other tribes, brought, 
for the first time, into the realm of civilization ; and while in the 
process of being transformed into new peoples. And so, in the 
process of time, it might come to pass, that the universal language 
proposed, should become the language of second nature to multi- 
tudes and nations. 

At the present time, the French is the more common language of 
the social and polite world — so far as there is any ; and the Eng- 
lish is the common language of commerce and trade — so far as 
there is any. But neither of these is simple enough in its structure 
for the universal language. It may be too soon to show how such 
a language ought to be constructed, from the languages of modern 
Europe ; but philologists might prepare one for trial — simple in its 
structure and of broad application, which should be written in the 
Roman characters, and still be such that the telegraphs might em- 
ploy it, and save all trouble of changes and translations in every 
new kingdom which the lightning has traversed with measured 
step. A very wonderful thing for our advancement, to-day, were 
a language known the world around ; a language lofty enough for 
worship, dignified enough for courts and diplomacies, concise enough 
for science, exphcit enough for commerce, and smooth enough for 
art, and tuneful to the musical ear. It is a pressing want of our 
time, and will be of all the coming times, till itself has come. 

The progress of man toward dominion is greatly hindered by the 
slowness of communication, travel and transportation ; by the ques- 
tion of fuel, the question of friction, and the question of safety. A 
few centuries will exhaust the coal beds of the world, practically. 
Light and heat obtained by artificial processes will be in demand, 
in a geometrical ratio of increase, in the centuries before us. We 
know perfectly well where these exist, in unlimited quantities, and 
how to release them from their bonds. The great lakes and oceans 



9 

are repositories of oxygen and hydrogen, and comparatively of little 
else. And these are just the gases needed for light and heat. All 
that is required to enable us to turn rivers and oceans into light and 
heat, is a cheap Avay of decomposing water into its elements. Any 
chemist can decompose water;' but every known way is an expen- 
sive way. The question of cheap fuel and high speed is therefore 
a simple question of chemistry. When the ocean steamer can 
pump her own fuel from the sea she rides, all the trouble of loading 
herself with coals will have passed away. It seems to one, when 
he thinks of it, a small and simple thing to do, to cheapen the pro- 
cess for the ■ decomposition of water, so -that its elements may be 
gathered up and used in largest quantities. Yet it is certain, that 
such a discovery, as this requires, would revolutionize the industry of 
a country like England, and modify the travel and traffic of all 
nations. Nevertheless, this problem is before the world, and our 
science ought to be modest till it has solved it. It used to be 
enough to say of a man, " he will never set the ocean afire,' to 
consign him to a place below mediocrity. Till he does set the 
ocean aflame, let no man of science now be accounted wise above 
his generation. 

There is, also, a grand advance to be made into the unknown 
powers, qualities and applications of electricity. These ten years 
we have seemed to be on the verge of some remarkable discovery 
in the wa}^ of making the prodigious forces of electricity of some 
benefit to the world. The fleetuess of the lightning Ave have 
secured; but the power of it we have never firmly grasped and 
managed. That which has such velocity, which, instantan- 
eously, makes iron run like water, must have the most terrific 
energy folded up in it ; must have a hundred times the power of 
steam ; must carry a storm in the bulk of a hogshead. 

The intense light and the consuming heat of electricity we are 
finding out, and we are learning every year some of its numerous 
and marvellous appKcations. But the sublimest use has not been 
discovered — that which shall make it by far the most efficient motive 
power ever known, and, at tlie same time, the cheapest, gentlest, 
safest and most manageable power possible to be conceived of, abso- 
lutely refusing to be a party to an accident. 

There is much study now given to this agent. The experiments 
with it are very numerous. It is already made to drive machinery, 



10 

but only in a child's way, and in the movements of a plaything. 
The secret of its power is yet locked up in its bosom. With many 
batteries, or voltaic-piles, and numerous helices we corner it for an 
instant, or catch it on points of charcoal ; and then it eludes us, and 
we are compelled to lay our gins and snares for it, and trap it over 
again, in the hope to get it in possession long enough to torture the 
wonderful secret out of it. We feel, every day of our lives, the 
throb of this, the most puissant thing in all nature, no doubt ; yet, 
while we pulse it we know not where the heart is, nor what is the 
law of its inmost movement, nor how tremendous its circuits, nor 
where are the nerves that give its arteries such awful impulses, nor 
how their mysterious center shall be found. 

When these problems in physical science shall have been hand- 
somely solved, we may conclude that we have, as a human race, 
won our empire of the sea, as well as our conquest of the land. 

The atmosphere yet remains ; the splendid home of airy crea- 
tures, and man has almost no dominion there. But he must have 
it. It is too broad a domain to continue' as a mere repository for 
human breath and an expanse for winged fowl. It was meant for 
man, not only as a robe of life, warmth and beauty, wrapped round 
the world he treads, but also a scene of exploit, and a highway of 
swift travel, and a sphere of artistic display and beautiful exhibi- 
tion. The same atmosphere which man defiles and disfigures, he 
ought to be able to gild and adorn ; and rainbows, and painted 
clouds, and pictured skies are not beyond the reach of art ; though, 
like fireworks, possible only as the brief pageantry of hours, and 
the intimations of glories unrevealed. All our ballooning is a bulky 
and awkward business, and all our flying machines are but costly 
failures. We can look for no success in gerial navigation, of any 
lasting and constant benefit, in our present state of discovery and 
attainment. Balloons are too cumbrous and unmanageable to be of 
regular use in the conveyance of passengers ; and no flying ma- 
chine will ever succeed, beyond a flattering experiment, until we 
know more than we do now. Even the birds of the air, whose skill 
men try to imitate, can carry no large weight, can convey no con- 
siderable burdens, and are, literally, but birds of passage. Were 
machines constructed by which one could fly like a bird, each one 
must still fly for himself ; and that would be hard work ; too much 
like a long land journey on foot, or crossing seas by rowing skiiFs. 



11 

The successful, swift-as-meteor, cheap and safe navigation of the 
air must be postponed until further research Into the elements, and 
the elimination of new elements, or combinations, or the release of 
some new gas cheaply and safely procured, and in large quanti- 
ties ; which shall be ten times lighter than hydrogen gas, or one 
hundred times. Then air ships can be floated that will carry loads 
of passengers, and electric motive forces can drive them, like light- 
nings, athwart the cope of heaven. Nor need we deem this alto- 
gether a dream of the fancy. Somewhere, amid the elements, 
there surely must be a vapor that shall lift our air ships on high, 
like as air does now our steamers above the ocean deeps. 

From the air the transition is easy to the light, in which beauty 
and mystery are more charmingly combined than anywhere else in 
nature. We take up its braided beams upon our hands, and hold 
them as patiently, and gaze at them as tenderly, as we should at a 
tangled skein of glossy silk and a charming girl trying to wind it 
off. We begin to analyze it, and it becomes more like a wonder 
and a romance at every stage of our investigation. Lending grace 
to the form which the touch can outline, and giving brightness to 
all its tints and hues, by blush and change of color telling the 
secret of its love for the electric force, in what is known as its 
polarity ; it finally begins to disclose to us the nature and composi- 
tion of the materials of the sun itself, and thus delights us with news 
from that which is, beyond all doubt, " a far country." 

But this light, already revealing much, already a powerful 
agent in vegetable and animal chemistry, and in other natural chem- 
istries, is even now employed as an agent, not very extensively 
indeed, in some of the arts, in bleaching, dyeing, painting, and the 
laboratory of the photographer. The solar spectrum is a marvellous 
thing, and there is no end to the possible adaptation of it to human 
amusement, satisfaction, instruction and benefit, both natural and 
moral. The secret of landscape painting is certainly in the light ; 
and our invention ought to do more than simply shade it off, as in 
the pearl picture. The time must come when the sun and the pre- 
pared canvas shall furnish us better colors and forms, and groups 
and combinations, than ever grew up under the hand of Zeuxis or 
Apelles, Raphael or Titian. And we are not to scorn the idea that, 
if the light can do such homely work as to bleach clothes and assist 
the laundress, there may be further great utilities and facilities in 



12 

it, which shall work as many more transformations than the rains 
of heaven do, as the floods of light exceed the floods of rain. In 
the wonderful chemistry of the world, no doubt, as in the composi- 
tion of the diamond, the light plays some active part, almost beyond 
our present abihty to conjecture. And it may yet be found that 
the sunlight which can warp planks so as to draw spikes from com- 
pact timbers, has in it a physical force which can Hft mountains. 
At all events our speculation has no need to fold its wings, until it 
has alighted in that farthest East, where "morn exulting springs." 
Within the empire of the air is embraced, also, the department 
of sound and the science of music. As yet, the music of the 
spheres, and the harmonies of space, and the melodies of the inter- 
stellar regions, if any music they have, is all unwritten music, mere 
improvisation, or more likely imagination ; and we cannot venture 
away from our more solid footing into those realms of fancy. We 
are so far realists that we cannot be sure that there is any possibil- 
ity of light, or sound, where there is no atmosphere. Yet, we can- 
not certainly affirm that light and sound are impossible, where 
atmospheres exist, which are unlike this of the earth. And our 
thought is, that the possibilities of music as a science, have not 
been, all of them, reached hitherto. There are people who have 
no ear for music, it is said ; and there are still more who have no 
pleasure at all in it, and comparatively few are they who have any 
special delight in it. If all the possibilities of the science were 
reached already, and if all the possible instruments for the express- 
ing of music were known, it is proper to infer from analogy that 
every ear should be opened, and every nature charmed by it, in 
some of the varieties. There are sights and scenes which every 
eye loves to behold. .There are some articles that are agreeable to 
evei-y palate. There are some odors that come up as fragrance 
into every nostril. There are articles that give delight to every 
hand that touches them. And while it is so comparatively easy to 
find those things which shall regale all the senses of the great 
majority of any community at once, except the sense of hearing, it 
has frequently been a matter of surprise, that there was no music 
which would find a willing ear in every individual. It would seem, 
therefore, from the analogy of nature, and fact, that our music has 
not reached its limits in development, and that there. are yet possi- 
ble inventions of musical instruments, and specimens of musical 



13: 

composition, whicli shall have a power over all of us, most subduing, 
or exciting ; a povrer more fraught with spells and witcheries than 
was ever the fabled harp of Orpheus, or the song of the syren. 
The best music is too much a monopoly ; that which is common is 
much of it too rude. In the good time coming, our houses shall be 
full of the best musical instruments, and our hearts and mouths full 
of glorious songs. 

Turning the attention again to things more palpable and material, 
has it never occurred to you, that men, the masses of men, live 
almost like the troglodytes still? What are human abodes 
made of ? What are our dwellings ? What are our cities? What 
more melancholy things are there than the sites of some of 
the famed cities of antiquity ? How mortifying is it to think that 
mankind can build of nothing that will last. Going to the places 
Avhere mighty cities once flourished, what do we find ? Usually 
fragments of stone, and brick, and pottery, and heaps of rubbish, 
and dust and desolation. If we look forth among the stars, among 
the clouds, along the mountain tops, and upon the grand old woods, 
and then turn to our abodes — how mean they seem! How like 
the structures children rear of cobs, and blocks, and splinters ! 
Human abodes and human monuments should be built of the earth's 
metals or crystals ; of metals that cannot be corroded by air and 
water, as iron is ; of metals that cannot be easily tarnished at all ; 
of metals that are as sweet and beautiful to the eye as Corinthian 
brass or choicest silver ; and of metals that can be everywhere pro- 
duced in abundance and at the cheapest rates. 

All our clay beds and sand hills afford the raw material for the 
beautiful products we are in need of. These deposits we resort to 
now, and by a primitive artificial process we produce from clay 
and sand, and heat, so marvellous a thing as an almost " perfect 
brick," with which to build our houses, construct our public edi- 
fices, and rear our great monuments ! Could we release it from 
its bonds, we might procure from these sand hills the purest rock 
crystal and flint in vast quantities ; and from these clay beds the 
bright, workable, and beautiful metal, aluminum, in so large a way, 
that houses, and ships, and other structures might be made of it, 
and made as it were forever. Not corroded hke commoner metals 
by the water of the sea, scarcely gnawed by the tooth of time, eaten 
by no rust, needing no repairs, plaster, paint, or wash, this metal 



14 

and like ones, and this crystal and flint, with their modifications, 
produced abundantly and cheaply in every land, would be sources 
of profit, comfort and enjoyment to the human race, beyond all our 
present power of estimation. Certainly it is not asking very much 
of our science, grown so great and so proud in these later years, 
that it shall furnish us, out of its more than two score of metals, 
one at least that shall be fit to build our houses of, and our cities 
of; so that they may continue after us, and be a joy forever. It is 
time we were building of something besides " wood, hay and stub- 
ble," brick and mortar, and broken fragments of crumbling rock. 
The huge sand-downs and moving sand-hills of the globe must have 
in them possibilities of use beyond that of the furnishing of raw 
material, in part, for glass, pottery and the like manufactures ; and 
it remains for mankind to learn how to utilize them and to rejoice 
in them, rather than to continue to mourn over their desolations, 
when they drift upon cultivated acres, and bury once fruitful soils 
hundreds of feet below the light of the sun. 

Moreover, our chemistry has been teaching us, for a generation, 
how like, in their chemical equivalents, are the substances known 
as starch and sugar. Of course they cannot be identical ; but they 
are so nearly so that the suggestion was long ago made that they 
might be transmuted, each into the other. Chemistry knows, no 
doubt, already how one may be changed into the other, in a small 
way, and by costly manipulation ; but no process has yet been 
made public, that I am aware of, in America, by which starch can 
be made into sugar, in a large way and cheaply. The question of 
the supply of sugar for the increasing use in the colder climates of 
the world, without resorting to the cane growths of the tropics for 
the saccharine matter, is an important one, which may create revo- 
lutions in commerce and modify the industries of some of the races 
of mankind. When fine sugars can be made from artichokes, pota- 
toes, corn, wheat and other cereals, as well as from sap, sorghum, 
beet-root and sugar-cane, the sugar supply will be a question of 
chemistry, and ample for the largest consumption and the sweetest 
tooth, and it will forever cease to be a source of perplexity. 

And this particular chemical change, so near to discovery, if not 
already discovered, and soon to be utilized, suggests ideas that 
range over the entire field of experimental chemistry, but especially 
in regard to the matter of artificial compounds and the manufactures 



15 

of articles, chemically, in imitation of such as are made by processes 
more natural, or nearer to nature. It is considered an honor to be 
able to consff'uct instruments of music that shall imitate the human 
voice, the thunder, the sea, the cataract, the sounds of the more 
musical animals, the songs of birds, and all the pleasing and sublime 
voices of nature. For the eye, also, nature is copied, imitated, 
plagiarized, and followed artificially in statuary, painting, etching, 
architecture, and the decorative arts, as well as by miniature repre- 
sentations of her scenery, of almost every kind, as in the Villa Pal- 
lavicini, near Genoa, in Italy ; and men obtain place, name, honor, 
and wealth, for doing these things artistically, beautifully, success- 
fully, and with enthusiasm. It is perfectly well known, that the 
laboratory of the chemist can produce, by mainly artificial processes, 
all the flavors, and odors, and pleasant aromas that are found among 
the world's leaves, roots, flowers, earths, minerals, and elsewhere, 
distilled by nature. Nor do people care a straw how the odor has 
been compounded whose fragrance is that of violets, roses, or ^w- 
mown hay. And the nostrils are educated by these fabrications to 
the enjoyment of sweet sensations, and are not disturbed by an 
inquiry into the history and extraction of the perfume. Thus, by 
art, artfully and artificially, we minister to the seeing, hearing and 
smelling organs. But when we come to the tasting organs, to 
mouth and palate, we are very fearful of the laboratory of the 
chemist, and of things artificially made. We are governed by our 
prejudice, when our reason will teach us that our prejudice is 
absurd. Slowly, indeed, we are coming to eat chemically prepared 
food, and to drink chemically compounded drinks. Nature's proc- 
esses are, all of them, largely chemical in their way ; and because 
the human chemist reaches results by more direct ways, we are 
childish enough to reject the products even when we are not able 
to distinguish the artificial from the natural. I had occasion to look 
into the purchase of mineral waters, some years ago, and then I 
learned that every celebrated medicinal spring of Europe was imi- 
tated by chemists, and that the waters artificially prepared were 
not commonly distinguishable from the genuine by the taste, were 
not inferior in medicinal efiects, and were used quite indiscrimin- 
ately by physicians themselves. I met persons in Italy and France, 
who said that most of the best wines were so exactly imitated that 
few, if any, could tell the imitation from the original, and that they 



16 

preferred the use of the artificially concocted — that which was pro- 
fessedly so — because -they knew what it was made of, when and 
where ; and nobody knew what was in much of the* wine of the 
markets, which was almost wholly spurious, but pretended not to 
be, and had to be much drugged to make it seem not to be. The 
Old World is probably fuller, even than the new, of all sorts of imi- 
tations and adulterations of meats, drinks, drugs, medicines, cos- 
metics, and all articles for ornament and luxury. Many of the 
articles Avith which food is adulterated, and drugs are adulterated, 
are, in fact, just as good, for the ends proposed, as the genuine 
article. They are cheaper in price, and are, therefore, improperly 
palmed off as genuine. And there is the wrong. If those who 
find out these cheaper articles would manufacture and sell them as 
substitutes for the real ones, but equally as good for the ends pro- 
posed by the use of them, while less costly, there would be good 
done and not evil. And it may be regarded as one of the coming 
certainties that we shall go to the chemists for a hundred things 
needed for the table, the chamber, and the nursery, which now we 
cultivate slowly, rear painfully, import expensively, or distill watch- 
fully, because we can have them made to order artificially, of the 
best quality, and can pay for them out of a moderg.te income — 
science and art having made many of the most sumptuous articles 
and greatest luxuries of the olden times, the common possession of 
all laboring ,men. 

Last of all, and greatest, is the dominion over man, over mind, 
over all the inner world, the problem of a true philosophy. The 
human mind has never been able to satisfy itself in regard to the 
origin of its ideas, and has never held to any self-consistent theory 
of mental development. Human speculation has flowed mainly in 
two channels, running nearly parallel, sunk deep into the heart of 
things, with a high promontory between them, difiicult, or impossible, 
to be passed over. 

The two philosophic tendencies are as old, certainly, as the schools 
of Greece ; and Plato is the leading, early man of the one school, 
and Aristotle of the other. Under each general division there 
were, and have always been, various subdivisions. The one large 
class regarded the mind itself as the source of its chief ideas, as 
as soon as it came into certain conditions and relations. The other 
large class contended that the mind derived all its ideas from its 
sensations, directly or indirectly. 



17 

The one class maintained the a priori method of reasoning as 
the grand one. The other planted itself squarely upon the a pos- 
teriori method. The one professed to deal with causes, essences, 
substances, and realities, rather than with facts and appearances. 
The other professed to concern itself with phenomwia, observed 
facts, things as they seem, and their connections, laws, and sequen- 
ces. The one class deduced — descended from general statements 
to the particular ones, from principles to their applications. The 
other class induced — ^ascended fi*om particulars to the general law, 
and from observed facts up to the great principle. These classes 
were sometimes known as idealists and realists, or as spiritualists 
and materialists. 

Now, the contest that was carried oa so long in Greece and 
renewed in the after ages, has been a lively one in Europe, since 
the Reformation, and has been maintained with no little vigor. In 
our time, the two styles of philosophy are often known as thelran- 
scendental and empiric, or, better, as absolutism and positivism. 
The prominent modern names — on each side — are, some of them — 
Hegel, Hamilton, Cousin, Comte. The positive philosophy is par- 
ticularly aggressive in the more recent years. It is advocated in 
England by Mansel, Spencer, Lewes and ]\iill. It is a fruitful 
philosophy in the sphere of natural science, and, what is termed the 
practical side of things ; but it limits itself so much, and conditions 
its knowledge so repeatedly, that it tends to lower and dwarf the 
immortal soul and the spiritual nature of man. In regard to the 
validity and extent of our knowledge, we can more readily sympa- 
thise with the other class, who have more to do with the mind itself, 
and employ the reason largely, hold to intuitions, make reflections, 
believe in insight, practice synthesis, indulge in hypothesis, stand 
by genius, and admit a revelation. But we cannot go wholly with 
either great party ; nor can people .generally do so. The world has 
groaned long with this struggle. Civilization has been retarded by it. 
Truth has suffered from it. The church has gone laboring between 
the philosophies like an ocean steamer in rough seas, with now one 
wheel clean out, and now the other, while the opposite one has been 
at the same moment so submerged as to do poor service or none. 
There is need, therefore, of a philosophy which shall not call itself 
the philosophy of the absolute, nor the philosophy of the condi- 
tioned, which shall take, if possible, middle ground between them, 



18 

and take all the truth from both of them, and combine them into 
a harmonious whole. And this is the problem in mental philosophy 
now before mankind ; and all metaphysical men should give long 
and earnest attention to it. It may be true that eclecticism has 
heretofore prt)ved a failure ; but a new eclecticism is possible now. 
The world is better prepared for it. Metaphysicians ought to reex- 
amine the possibilities of the case. They should do so all the more 
hopefully, because the extreme absolutists and the extreme positiv- 
ists have rushed around in different directions from opposite posi- 
tions into nearly the same cavern of darkness — falling off into almost 
the same black abyss. The extreme positivist at the end of his 
research, can find no God at all. The extreme absolutist, at the 
outmost line of his speculation, as yet, can find no God but Pan. 
Between the two we should utterly refuse to make any choice. It 
belongs to our time to frame and build out that philosophy which 
can logically distinguish between essence and phenomena, sub- 
stance and property, the Creator and the creation, the Maker and 
the man, the human being and the Divine Person, and rightly 
deal with them. The chariot of our progress cannot long go upon 
a single wheel. The movements of both of the philosophic tenden- 
cies are required to roll on the vehicle to conquest. And if wisest 
hands shall guide its steeds, its track shall smoke ere long, but 
with the dust of stars. And then, one of the grandest conditions 
of rest, joy and hope for our human race, will have gladdened the 
world. 

It is, as I suppose, by glances like these at the situation, at the 
possibihties and needs of our age, at the empires to be, that we, as 
the advanced and thoughtful men of our day, forelooking the future, 
anticipating the grandeurs, may learn whither to direct our ener- 
gies, how to employ our several abilities, how not to throw our 
short lives away, and may project ourselves farthest into the future, 
do our best for the sake of our long-burdened humanity, and most 
fitly prepare the way of the Lord upon the earth. 

It is by looking away from the accomplished to the unaccom- 
plished, from the known to the unknown, from the seen to the 
unseen, from the little that is to the much that needs to be, that we 
get our bearings, lose our pride of attainment, see our failings, 
admit our deficiencies, and regulate our attitudes. We have need 
to remind ourselves that our century is only one of the centuries of 



19 

time, and not a very advanced one at that ; that we simply walk 
the corridors and enter a few of the outer courts of the great tem- 
ple of truth eternal ; that it is reserved for those more favored, if 
not better men, who shall live many ages after us, to possess them- 
selves entirely of the glorious structure, penetrate to" its interiors, 
behold its splendid adytum, handle its sacred arcana, and congrat- 
ulate, disport and regale themselves within that vast rotunda, whose 
light streams through a dome of solid crystal, without flaw or frac- 
ture, and paints the scene within with such a charm, in such a 
beauty, as never was on land or sea. 

And thus, also, in our little individualities, each working so much 
alone toward his destiny, we. cling and creep, snail-like, up the steep 
and broad incline of fact, and thrust out for a time, tentatively, into 
these empires to be, the long antennae of our knowledge gained, 
tipped with the eyes of our faith. And then we retire, leaving 
at least our shells as the wayrnarks of progress, to • grow^ore 
shining and translucent in the light of suns, and as clear white 
specks signaling the march of the Eternal Wisdom across the wastes 
of time. 



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